All the World Beside E-Book

Garrard Conley

• Herausgeber: Grove Press UK
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 446

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community in Puritan New England. One disciple, Dr Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister's words a love so captivating it transcends language. As the bond between the two men grows more and more passionate, their wives and children must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies and judgments that threatens to destroy them in this world and the next. Set during the turbulent historical upheavals that shaped America, All the World Beside reveals the very human lives just beneath the surface of dogmatic belief.

Leseprobe

ALLTHEWORLDBESIDE

ALSO BY GARRARD CONLEY

Boy Erased

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Grove Press UK,an imprint of Grove Atlantic

This paperback edition first published in Great Britain in 2025 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove Atlantic

Copyright © Garrard Conley, 2024

The moral right of Garrard Conley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

The events, characters and incidents depicted in this novel are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual incidents, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be used in any manner in the learning, training or development of generative artificial intelligence technologies (including but not limited to machine learning models and large language models (LLMs)), whether by data scraping, data mining or use in any way to create or form a part of data sets or in any other way.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

E-book ISBN 978 1 80471 085 2

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For Shahab

“Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream—till the heart be touched. That touch creates us—then we begin to be—thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity.”

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, LETTER TO SOPHIA PEABODY HAWTHORNE

“The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.”

DJUNA BARNES, NIGHTWOOD

ALLTHEWORLDBESIDE

TO

SARAH WHITFIELD

IN BOSTON.

Hull, Province of Georgia,January 1, 1765.

Sister,

Perhaps you will not be surprised to receive a letter from Nobody. It must seem I have always defied the expectations placed upon the boy once named Ezekiel Whitfield, your brother, and in writing to you now, I am once again defying the role of the exile I am meant to play. In truth, I never intended to defy even one soul, certainly not yours. This life of exile came upon me gradually, then all at once when the fatal blow was dealt our family and our lives altered forever.

Gradually, because even from the first I knew I would never follow Father’s vocation. Never have I been suited for the sort of life where others must listen to the wisdom of my words. You must know this. You know that since the age of four, Sister, the very year the awakening came to our town, I have not spoken. This has not been by design. I do not know the reason for it, though I believe I must have known even then that no one wanted to hear what I might have to say, and that it was best to avoid all trouble by never saying a word.

Writing must suffice.

After leaving you, I traveled thousands of miles from Cana, working from one mill to the next, following rumors of more work and better pay. I do not know where my feet shall land, but this town, Hull, has offered me a few months’ work.

You would be surprised to see your brother working so industriously. Allow me to paint it for you.

On any given day, I roll up my shirtsleeves and strip bark. I carry logs to the yard for decking. I pray a silent prayer over the lost tree if I remember. Some days are too cold to remember, wind sharp with ice from the river’s spray. The men give me a look every now and then. Curiosity tells them something. I shrink before their eyes. At the age of five and thirty, I am the size of their wives, even their older children. In fact, if children live in the house where I am boarding, I am claimed as a playmate and my second workday begins. The food in these houses is always better because someone else cooked it, though it is never as good as the memory of your cooking, Sister. Fresh bread from the mill, a porridge of some sort. The best evenings are silent. We gather round a table, fire blazing behind us, heads bowed from overwork—a benediction. On days like these, it is almost as though I am home.

Inevitably, someone will spoil the moment by asking questions. I do not answer these questions. If they continue to insist, I write out my answers, though I do not tell them much. If they ask where I am going, I write the truth: I am a pilgrim in search of a place where I may be free. If they ask about family, I lie: I say all of you are dead. This never fails to quiet them.

In these quiet moments of astonishment, I remember the dress you leant me, Sister, the day I felt truly one with you. I was sick, and you wished me better. You dressed me in blue silk with the lace stomacher, your childhood favorite. You held me up. You propped me against you. You wanted me pretty then. You must have seen the smile upon my face as we gazed into the looking glass at our twinned features, red cheeks you pinched for me so I would appear beautiful beside you. That was when Nobody was born, Sister. Ezekiel Whitfield left us. You gave me that gift all those years ago, and it has taken me two decades of living to receive it fully.

I think of you often, and miss you, and pray you are safe with Mother in Boston, far from the Pharisees who brought our family to ruin.

I do not think of Cana, not the place itself. What happened in Cana has made it impossible to think of it as a real place. I must think of it now as an idea, Father’s idea of a better world, and perhaps that is how it was always meant to live. Father believed the best in people, and they destroyed him for it. I know you see things differently. Do you continue to blame him? I will not lie to you, Sister. I want you to see things as I see them. I want you to see how circumstances made it impossible for him to find a path forward. The same was true for all of us. We did not always comfort each other through our sufferings, but we may do so now, though it is late and much that has been done cannot be undone. Will you turn to me now, Sister, though I may seem a stranger to you? I shall always remain

your brother,

Nobody

I

NIGHT WATCH

1730

1.

Spring

The shore of his mother, her warmth sheltering his infant body from the cold. The shore of his sister, pressing her nose to his. Lavender and orange on Sabbath mornings when the women pass him round amid psalm-singing. Violet and musk and wheat as the women take turns grinding grain on working days, the sound of stone against stone, the room filling with fire. Then, after their work, the cold on his face as his mother carries him home in her arms, her breath a raft of white cloud, his hand reaching to catch it as it passes between them. Do not cry, little one. There will always be more clouds. So long as I am here to breathe, ye shall have more clouds.

His father is a darkness between these bright shores, the man’s voice a thunder that shakes his bones. After the singing on Sabbath mornings comes his father’s sound, loud and booming from the pulpit. The man’s eyes are sharp, searching. They find Ezekiel within the flock. After the service, when his father holds him, Ezekiel grows frightened. He cries out for his mother. The smells are wrong, musty wood and tobacco, no trace of milk.

“What is wrong, child?” his father says, gripping him too tightly. “Does he not seem touched by some devil, Catherine?”

“Do not cry,” his mother says, reaching for him. “You are mine, little one. You belong to eternity.”

Nuzzled against her neck, head full of rosewater, he forgets his father. Each time he lands upon her shore, he forgets the man, again and again, until one day, in the spring season after his first birthday, Ezekiel remembers his father even in the midst of his mother’s embrace, and in spite of it all—his bones’ fear of the man’s unfathomable darkness and the knowledge that he may be swallowed whole by this darkness—he desires his father. He cries out for his father. He cries for so long and with such force, his entire body aches. Soon come the waves of nausea. His flesh grows hot, sweaty; his mother, fearing typhoid, carries him to the new physician’s house. There, he cries out once more for his father, sensing the darkness he craves is even farther from him now. The physician places his cool hands upon Ezekiel’s belly. Ezekiel grows calmer; he has seen this face before, half-cloaked in shadow, with the sound of the forest at night. His father had been there, too. This man is like his father but not, with softer, kinder eyes, a wide smile.

The physician feeds him a bitter milk that falls against his throat like a scalding coal. Ezekiel closes his eyes.

“He is a beautiful child,” the physician says.

“After his father,” his mother says.

“Yea,” the physician says, placing a trembling hand upon the child’s brow.

“I’ve done everything,” his mother says. “I’ve done everything, and nothing works. I cannot guess what the source of this trouble may be.”

“Wait and see,” the physician says. “There is no fever at the moment. You’ve no need to fear typhoid.”

“I am tired.”

“It is sometimes hard with boys this age. They start to sense the world is not all mothering. Does he still sleep in your bed?”

“On occasion. Though I am determined not to spoil him as I did my firstborn.”

“Oh, spoil him for a while yet. He’ll soon grow stronger on his own.”

“You are a kind man, Arthur. I am glad you are here with us.”

“Tell this to the others in Cana. I fear only you and your husband are glad.”

“The rest of the flock will be glad when they have need of your services. Give it time.”

When Ezekiel opens his eyes, his mother is carrying him home under a pink sky. He wants to cry, but the potion has made him too weak.

“Look, little one,” his mother says, bringing them to a stop. “The first bloom.”

He follows the tip of her finger. At first, he cannot see anything beyond it. Then, slowly, a burst of white against the pink sky. The white dances. In its center, a pink circle with tiny white spindles.

“Your father planted these trees. Soon, in summer, you’ll eat of this tree’s fruit. I shall bake it in a pie and feed it to you. Do you see? The world has been made for you.”

Sarah hears them enter through the garden door. Her brother is quiet now, but her mother’s loud sighs tell her the problem has not been solved. He has been crying for days, ever since their father left for Stockbridge, less than half a day’s journey yet far enough to keep him there for the week it will take to set up the Mohican mission. Something always goes wrong when their father is away. It is a law in Cana. She rushes to the kitchen to see if she can be of any help.

“No, Daughter,” Catherine says, shifting Ezekiel to one hip. “It is only that I am tired, and worried.”

“I shall prepare a supper,” Sarah says.

“You are too young.”

Sarah holds up both hands with palms facing her mother, spreading her fingers wide. Ten. Soon the number will move past her hands, and she will have to remember her age as something outside of her body, alien to herself.

“Well,” Catherine says, relenting, looking about the kitchen for any hazards. “Do you remember our lessons, girl?”

“Yea,” Sarah says, nearly leaping across the room to embrace her mother. She forces herself to keep still. Any movement might put an end to her sudden adulthood. Sarah knows her mother has coddled her, protected her from the duties of womanhood; by the age of seven, her friend Abigail Jacobsen had known how to set a table, sew a dress.

“A simple beef and pease stew then,” Catherine says. “Your father won’t be home for another day.”

“Should we not send someone for him? He might know what to do with Ezekiel.”

“Arthur Lyman has given the child a potion. It should last through the night. I’ll take an hour to bed while he sleeps. Wake me if you need me, Sarah. Do not hesitate.”

Sarah presses her mother’s arm and kisses the top of her brother’s head, always so warm and sweet-smelling, with something of the gristmill about it. She scurries out the door and to the side of the house, where the tinder pile awaits. With each movement, each exhale, she adds another word to her prayer: Please, Lord, please, yea Lord, keep us safe.

Two years before Ezekiel’s birth, before the new physician arrived in Cana, Sarah had lost her friend Abigail Jacobsen to an outbreak of typhoid. Before that year, the world had been composed of wonder. She and Abigail had spent hours with Catherine in the garden, naming the plants anew. Hyssop, lemon balm, sweet woodruff became Tall Man, Lady of Green Fans, Sweetly White.

Catherine had clapped for them. “That one does look a little like a lady overburdened with fans. And yea, this is our dear Sweetly White, who must always be protected from too much rain.”

When Sarah’s father once teased them about their game, insisting God had granted Adam alone the power of nomenclature, Catherine had said no such record of plant naming existed in the Bible. “Adam named only animals. There is but one named plant. And it was quite lengthy, that name. Do you remember it, Sarah?”

“The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

“Yea, quite lengthy. We women shall content ourselves with naming all the others.”

Her father had laughed, a rare sound. “A group of Anne Hutchinsons, in my garden,” he said. Anne had been banished, that woman, and later scalped by the Siwanoy of New Netherland. This had happened almost a century before Sarah’s birth, but the lesson was clear: stray too far from your station, and God will punish you.

Sarah thinks of their game now, pausing before the garden with tinder in hand. The rooms of the Whitfield house stand before her in miniature. She is a giant who has ripped off the roof to peer inside. Her father had built the garden in this way, in honor of her mother’s curious cravings when she was with child. The effect is magical and curious: for the parlor, borage; for the kitchen, spearmint; for Sarah’s chamber, strong-smelling sorrel, apple-sharp and fresh; and all about the garden, to serve as decorative walls, the yellow tufts of marigolds. The garden was a gift, a rather impractical gift since it did not always suit their kitchen’s needs, but Sarah felt it was as much a part of herself as her own beating heart. All one had to do, when the house became too oppressive, was to stand before the garden and imagine the rooms behind you transformed into something far more alive. It seemed one could not be unhappy in such a place.

Now, however, as she counts the green shoots rising from the soil, Sarah finds her spring joy tempered by the memory of Abigail’s illness. Sarah had been forbidden to sit beside Abigail’s sickbed. She had stayed awake every night of her friend’s illness, praying the prayer she now repeats for her brother: Please, Lord, please, yea Lord, keep us safe. After Abigail’s death, Sarah’s father had preached a sermon on God’s will, his eyes lighting on her several times during the service, as if to say, Your mourning is sinful, child. And how could she argue with such words from such a father? He had been called by the Lord to spread His gospel in this New World. Whatever words he uttered from the pulpit had been passed down directly from Heaven. Perhaps it was a sin even to pray her prayer, to ask God to intercede on her behalf. Could it be His will that her brother, her sweet-smelling baby brother whose first birthday is but a few weeks past, be condemned to suffer and die as Abigail did?

She had discovered she would soon have a brother when she and Catherine had been playing their game, renaming the plants. It had not been the same without Abigail, but she could not bear to to see her mother lose the one entertainment that seemed to bring a genuine smile to her lips. They watched the sky grow dark, and in only moments, a heavy rain began to turn white and hard. The hard white knobs filled the garden and struck at the plants, tearing at their leaves, weighing them down. Sarah witnessed a vision of their house overrun by these intruders, each room overcrowded, the inhabitants beaten beyond recognition. She buried her face in her mother’s dress and cried.

“Hush, child,” her mother said. “What have you seen?”

“I do not know,” Sarah said, though she did know. She had seen death once again—death that had seemed impossible before Abigail’s illness, now gathering its forces to invade their house.

“All of this will pass,” her mother said. “The plants. The trees. Even this house and the people in it. The Lord hath made it so. Yet He hath also asked of us—each of us—to give names to life while we live. Name what you see, child. What shall we call this thing you have never seen and which terrifies you so?”

Sarah parted the curtain of her mother’s dress and willed herself to open her eyes. She saw an ugly mess before her where earlier she had witnessed order. The plants she loved to name were no longer familiar. She remembered a verse from one of her father’s sermons: Thou shalt plant vineyards, and dress them, but shalt neither drink of the wine, nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them.

When Sarah looked into her mother’s eyes, she saw something new inside them, a depth of feeling she later learned was her new brother. She reached for her mother’s stomach, placed her palms there.

“I do believe you possess the gift, dear,” Catherine said, sliding one hand to meet her daughter’s. “You mustn’t tell another soul or they’ll call you a witch. Not until it is time.”

Catherine closes the curtains, leaving a small gap through which she can watch her daughter. The girl stands rigid before the garden with a pile of tinder cradled in her arms, lost to the world. She has coddled the girl too much, it is true, but she had wanted Sarah to love her, to come to trust her, in a way she had neither loved nor trusted her own mother. From the bedroom, she can admire the simple braid she fixed for her daughter this morning, a ritual she finds comforting especially on these terrible days when her husband is gone.

Soon the girl will have to remember to cover her head even in the yard, to watch after the state of her undress. Soon it will be time to hide her from the boys, from the temptations of the forest. There is always much to fear, much to worry over.

Ezekiel sleeps soundly on the bed. She joins him there, lying in such a way that they might breathe the same air. He is still hers, and she his. Arthur was right; spoil him for a while yet while she can. His tiny hand finds her finger, grasps it tightly. His closed eyes wrinkle with effort. She is a giant beside him. She is far too large for this delicate creature. The world is far too large.

Since his son’s birth, her husband has entered a new era of restlessness. At first, he had watched over the boy incessantly, peering into the crib as the child slept, asking her if she noticed anything odd about him. He had not done the same for Sarah. Catherine told herself it was because the new child would be an heir, someone to one day take his place, but she had come to believe there was something far more profound in her husband’s worry. He began to ask her if the child might be possessed, if there might be some devilish tendencies in her sweet boy. Then, as though he had confirmed it, he began to avoid Ezekiel, to leave the room when she entered the parlor with the child in her arms. The result, it seemed to Catherine, was that her second-born was afraid of his father.

A grunt, sweet and quiet. He wants to fight the potion’s effects. For a moment she worries the drug might kill him; she pictures his face turning blue in the dim. Then she remembers how Arthur has not lost a child since he came to their town a little more than a year ago, in all the months of her pregnancy. She closes her eyes, breathes in the scent of the potion on his breath—an unnatural sweetness, like overripened fruit.

“Wait and see,” Arthur had said. “There is no fever at the moment. You’ve no need to fear typhoid.”

“I am tired,” she had said.

Some time later, after the child had fallen asleep on the table: “And his father? How does our Ezekiel take to him?”

Then those horrible words that issued from her mouth without warning. “I do not believe he loves his father.” Where had they come from? Why had she told them to Arthur?

The man’s eyes as she said this. Fear. Shock. Something else, perhaps. It was hard to say what disturbed her most about his reaction, but she knew it had something to do with his interest. As though Ezekiel were his primary concern, not hers. She had felt this before when in his presence, what she had told herself was a natural consequence of his preternatural gifts as a healer. Why had it bothered her this time?

She breathes in tandem with her son, sleep spinning its wool blanket over them. She listens for the faint sounds of her daughter preparing supper below. A bowl placed on the worktable. The scrape of ladle against pot. Quiet, careful sounds. The susurration beside her, the boy’s lungs so small in comparison to the riot of his father’s snoring. She can hear the wind outside picking up, a hollow probing as it seeks entry, then a low mournful moan as it turns back on itself in defeat.

Her childhood house had never been silent. Always her bedridden mother calling out for some task to be dealt with immediately, and Catherine, eldest of three daughters, was the one forced to carry out the woman’s every wish. Catherine now craves silence within her own house. The groaning floorboards she quiets by sprinkling flour into their joints. Her mother’s china, stacked in the entry sideboard, no longer clatters when someone descends the stairs, thanks to the cotton she has placed beneath the plates and cups. Even the birds have no place to build their nests in her eaves ever since Catherine strung up the netting Anne Lyman had lent her. She has taught her children to respect this silence, raised Sarah to speak only when she has something important to say. In this way she and Nathaniel have always been well matched. Better to save up one’s thoughts, toss out the unimportant bits, and deliver one long, dazzling, and brilliant sermon brimming with the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. And oh, those sermons! When he is inside the house, she can feel the low rumbling of his thoughts collecting, a calming vibration that passes through her, gathering strength, awaiting the perfect moment—God’s moment—when she will look up from the midst of the crowd to see her husband beatific and exalted, perfected. She can cope with all of his moods, his long bouts of coldness toward her, so long as he transcends his earthly shell to become this other man on Sabbath mornings. Yet, as of late and in this present moment—his long trips elsewhere, the neglect of his son, these hours she spends alone in the house—this she does not think she can abide much longer.

“I am sure that cannot be true,” Arthur had said. “The heart is not always so simple.”

In the physician’s house there are many jars, glass jars of all sizes, lining the walls of his workroom. An additional lean-to for his growing collection of rare ingredients, many of which, truth be told, he simply wished to collect on account of his interest in botany. In the jar on his worktable is a fine powder made of cascarilla, often used as a tonic, a plant found only in the tropics, procured from a seaman who had taken a liking to him down at Long Wharf when he and his family had lived in Boston. The seaman had passed by Arthur, who was pretending to admire the waves lapping the piles; then, in a swift motion Arthur had come to associate with these assignations, the man returned, permitting his arm to graze Arthur’s hips. Arthur waited a few moments before following the man down a narrow alley. When they finished, and the seaman surprised Arthur with a tender kiss on the neck, a promise was made: a sum of money for the cascarilla, a trade, for when the seaman next traveled to the West Indies. Always it had been this way with the men Arthur met at the wharves. Whatever pleasure he found there had soon been eclipsed by the trade, and he was able to tell himself the animal moans that escaped his mouth as the men entered him were merely part of the price of his science.

Lizard tails, fish scales, and ambergris he had collected by less complicated means. Though he gave up the wharves and the men and all that came with his previous life when he moved to Cana, he could not give up these rare ingredients. Here they sit beside pots of mint and juniper berries, a reminder that other flavors, other essences, continue to thrive on other shores.

Nathaniel had asked after the jars. It has been a little more than a year since then, a year that feels like an eternity. Sitting now at his desk not long after Catherine and Ezekiel Whitfield paid him a visit, Arthur wonders if none of this would have happened, none of this fine mess, had Nathaniel never asked.

Always a curious man, the reverend had gazed into the jars with his nose nearly touching the glass. His earnestness, his helplessness before the unknown, was so very handsome, so real. He had come for a salve, having injured his hand while repairing the meetinghouse roof. The nail had not gone in too deep, Arthur saw. They barely knew each other at this point; it had been less than a few months since the Reverend Whitfield spoke before the stocks on Summer Street in Boston, where men were punished on a scaffold before the public, a fitting place for a sermon on freedom from sin. Arthur had gone to see him, this man people said had once led five hundred souls to be saved in one meeting.

The rest is now part of Cana’s story: a wealthy physician leaving his comfortable post in Boston to join a small town, hardly a town really, of roughly two hundred souls who had all been converted thanks to Reverend Whitfield’s words. As Nathaniel spoke, Arthur felt the hinges flying off their joints, the boards cracking, his limbs freed of their shackles. He did not have to do what he did at the wharves; he could simply love this man—a divine love, a Christ-love.

Arthur had added a handful of juniper berries, some beeswax, and a sprig of mint to the mortar. As his hands moved, he felt the reverend’s eyes upon him. “It won’t hurt,” Arthur said, trying to ease the familiar tension creeping through his legs, up his back. He felt if he turned away, he would soon feel that hand brushing his back. He dipped two fingers into the salve and held them up. The reverend held out his palm, and Arthur slid his free hand beneath the man’s, steadying it so it no longer trembled. The reverend let out a small sound at this, something like a laugh or a cry. Carefully, Arthur pressed the salve into the wound. Once or twice, the reverend’s hand jerked back, as though expecting pain, but Arthur knew there would be none; he knew there would be only a cooling relief, so he gripped the reverend’s wrist to hold him fast. “Our Savior endured the whip and the cross,” the reverend said. “Your reverend cannot endure a sting.”

“There is no sting, reverend,” Arthur replied. “It is your mind playing tricks.”

Arthur must have known then. It would take some time, another month of dancing around it, but finally, one night when Arthur had seen the windows of the meetinghouse lit from inside and decided to pay his friend a visit, it had happened. He walked into the door where none should enter but the minister and discovered Nathaniel kneeling beside the pulpit, his wig cast aside, his natural hair pasted to temple and brow. A man afflicted. He walked to the minister’s side and listened to the sound of their breathing in the cavernous hall. When his hand reached the minister’s shoulder, faint words escaped the man’s lips: “I discovered Catherine here, upon a pulpit much like this. She fell into my arms, and I kissed her before all the people of Hingham. I did not know why I had remembered it just now, why I felt such a powerful desire to pray this evening. Now I understand. The Lord was preparing me.”

Arthur had heard the story, a famous one. Catherine crying out for salvation, the minister delivering her not only to God but also right into the arms of marriage. For once, Arthur did not choose his next words carefully. “Will you open your arms to me, reverend?”

And when it happened, he understood the Reverend Whitfield’s words had not been freeing him from sin but rather leading him toward something more mysterious and binding, a love that felt divine. He had seen but a spark of that love when standing before the stocks on Summer Street, yet he had not understood it. He had cloaked it in a language incommensurate to the highest reaches of their bond, which exists beyond all human languages save, perhaps, that of touch. Some part of him had known he wanted this all along, all of those other men were leading him to this man, the one who spoke directly to his heart.

The knowledge that he is responsible for their coupling no longer troubles him. He views his predicament from afar, with a detachment he usually reserves only for his studies. Perhaps he should be fearful; perhaps he should worry after the state of his soul, but all that matters to him now is this love, keeping it alive, ensuring the reverend does not turn him away from the source of his happiness. He knows they view it differently, of course. The reverend believes their time together in the meetinghouse was but a slip, a mistake, perhaps a natural reaction to their close brotherly bond, but one the Devil has corrupted in order to drive them away from God. It is for this reason they have only come together in that way once; each time Arthur tries to draw closer, Nathaniel pushes him away. Arthur cannot understand this thinking; or rather, he cannot understand how this thinking can be so close to the reverend’s heart, when all that drives Arthur, in the wake of their union, is desire, not thought. A desire that, in his case, makes him feel closer to God than ever before.

Could it be anything but a heavenly sign that Ezekiel Whitfield was born almost exactly nine months later? Could it even be possible that the seed spilled between them that evening had remained with Nathaniel as he lay with Catherine later that night with renewed vigor, lust carrying over from one body to the next, uniting them all? The only evidence he needed was the boy’s features, which inexplicably resembled both of theirs and also Catherine’s: a divine miracle. The Lord was known to work in such mysteries. None believed Mary at first; none would have her at the inn, yet see how she was blessed, see how she was vindicated.

He stands. The room tips, swaying. He steadies himself on the edge of the desk, waiting for the dizziness to pass. They had been here. He had pressed his hands upon the child’s belly, soothed him as a father might. After his father, Catherine had said. Something had unlocked inside of him with her incantation. He had stared into those eyes so like Nathaniel’s and seen himself reflected there, right in the center, where he belongs. He wanted to return with them to their house, care for the child in Nathaniel’s absence, but he forced himself to remain calm. The child is not sick with fever, but something does indeed ail him. Even if it is not serious, his father must know. Yes, that is the right thing to do. Arthur must leave at once so he can tell Nathaniel. Less than half a day’s journey to Stockbridge, but he can make the trip much sooner if he takes one of the Griggses’ strong pacers. He banishes from his mind, as soon as it appears, the thought that he is fabricating an excuse to see Nathaniel again.

A few moments of slow breathing, and Arthur is calm. He heads up the stairs to tell Anne and Martha of his plan. No one in the parlor. The kitchen empty as well, the spout of Anne’s teapot still steaming. He places one hand upon the side of the scalding teapot and holds it there a second too long. They had been here. His wife and daughter had been here and left him.

“Who is this stranger?” a voice behind him says. His wife’s.

Arthur paints on a smile to hide his pain, tucking the injured hand into his coat pocket. He turns to Anne, who stands in the kitchen doorway with a genuine smile upon her lips, one hand on the frame. She is still young, thirty-one to his forty, and playful. Today she wears her market dress, an ugly sack that on her delicate frame looks like a costume, a smudge of dirt streaked across her reddened cheek for added effect. It is her day to stand beside Deborah Inverness, the merchant’s wife, and assist that stern woman in Cana’s unique system of trade, a system designed by all for the good of all, where none shall want for goods or money. She is proud of her task even as Deborah keeps her at a distance, even as the other inhabitants of Cana eye her with suspicion, as though she might be a popish spy.

“I saw you eyeing that teapot, stranger,” she says. “My husband does not permit tea in this house, so if you wish to have some, you should have it now before he returns.”

“How long have you been home?”

“An hour,” Anne says. “Deborah brought in Goody Munn so she’ll have someone else to spread her vile gossip with. I’m afraid I am lacking in that particular grace. But it was so quiet here—I thought you had gone out. What were you doing down there?”

Arthur feels caught out. Had he voiced any of his thoughts aloud?

“The tea, Arthur,” Anne says, after a pause. “Would you like some tea?”

His palm has begun to pulse with each heartbeat. “We shouldn’t be keeping tea. It is too expensive, too lavish. They’ll think we haven’t adapted to life in Cana, that we are too good for them. I hope you don’t offer it to the other women.”

“What other women?” Anne takes a seat at the table, propping herself up by the elbows like an eager pupil. “There is no one to offer it to.”

“The town will come round when they have need of our services,” Arthur says. A parody of Catherine’s words, for he doesn’t yet believe them. Though he and Anne have given up their life in Boston for Cana, there is something the flock seems to detect in them, some worldly sheen lingering within their mannerisms and habits of speech that keeps them separate from the rest. Though they store their money in the city and rarely spend it on anything aside from what is required of Arthur’s practice, it seems nothing can wash away the scent of their past.

“And what is my service to these people, Arthur?” Anne says, staring longingly at her nails. He had helped her overcome the urge to bite them, that nervous habit: a simple solution of kitchen pepper and clove applied to each nail. “We’ve been here more than a year, and still no one calls upon me. If I am to sit here every day in this house by myself, I shall have my tea. Besides, Martha has given up too much already. She is too young, Arthur, to give up every comfort.”

“And what of Catherine for you? And Sarah as a companion for Martha? There is some symmetry in the arrangement, after all.” Arthur places his good hand upon his wife’s shoulder. “Are they not someone?”

“Indeed, we must labor diligently, my dear husband, if we are to finish your fine painting, for who shall be companion to Ezekiel?”

Arthur is glad his wife cannot see his expression. “Please be serious, Anne.”

“Is the notion of welcoming another Lyman into this world not a matter of significance? It has been quite some time since we made the attempt.” Anne presses Arthur’s hand with her own. “Besides, they are the minister’s family. They must be kind to everyone. It hardly counts as anything more than Christian charity.”

“I believe Catherine at least sees something of herself in you. We are quite alike, the Lymans and the Whitfields. Oddly, I think we are all outsiders here.”

Arthur sees the back of his wife’s neck tense.

“You are indeed a stranger, husband,” Anne says. “Are you so full of philosophy today?”

Arthur frees his hand and takes a seat opposite her. He must look a dandy with one hand still in his pocket, but Anne has not seemed to notice. “Catherine came to the house this morning with Ezekiel. The boy is sick.”

“Oh dear. Is there anything I can do?”

“It seems I shall have to fetch the father,” Arthur says, as casually as possible. “I do not believe it is anything serious, but one must always be cautious.”

“Well, what is it then, if it is not serious?”

“I hesitate to call it a spiritual affliction. Yet it cannot hurt to ask the reverend to pray over him.”

“Of course,” Anne says, nodding. “But Arthur—isn’t he due back tomorrow? Soon it will be a week, will it not?”

“I believe so,” Arthur lies. “I’ve not kept count of the days. But you know how these men tarry. Stockbridge is a very busy place, and I wouldn’t wish him to think he had leisure where he had not.”

“Of course,” Anne says, and Arthur must struggle not to hear the hint of irony. He turns to the kitchen window. Outside, the alders tremble, a buzzing of green. A thrush calls out four cheerful notes. He hears his wife move from the table, the scraping of the teapot, then a sharp sound as she pours out the precious brew.

The reverend does not waste time in Stockbridge. Every day, to maximize efficiency, he wakes at dawn, prayer poised on his lips. He opens his diary to the marked page and adds another prayer, a meditation on God’s greatness. Miraculously, even as sleep lies coiled at the back of his mind, the reverend creates something beautiful with his words. It is his life’s glory, these words; they come to him unbidden. Sometimes, after he finishes, he allows himself to marvel at the pages, at the strange consistency with which his mind has focused on the natural world. Here lies the spider, spinning string from its abdomen, launching into the great unknown in search of a home made of air. How close he brings us to Heaven, to a world made of gossamer which catches the morning’s dew, spinning it into pearls which, in the right breeze, tremble like lost bits of sunrise, morning stars. Yet even as the spider is the perfection of the Lord’s beauty, he is also the symbol of the world’s evil. This home of his—this heavenly pattern—exists only to usher in death, to entrap his prey. Thence you are led astray by beauty, by the trappings of this world, soon to be sucked to a dry husk by a venomous foe. The reverend has taken to calling these natural portraits Shadows of Divine Things. Shadows, because what you first mistake as the purely divine in nature turns out, on closer inspection, to harbor the danger, the rot, the death and slow decay of this wicked world.

At seven, the reverend takes his Indian pudding and cider with the other white men and one Indian minister in the great hall of the newly built Mission House. As he eats, careful not to swallow too quickly, he admires the view from the windows on either side of the room: maples of startling abundance, their crisp greenness held by the sturdy bones below. The wooden spoon never scrapes his teeth.

The other men know to give him space. They congregate at a separate table, speaking in the hushed tones of young boys. During the past several years of working at the Stockbridge mission, all of them have felt, at some point in their tenure here, that the man must hate them, only to discover, a few days later, a gentle hand upon their shoulder, their name uttered sweetly in prayer, a surprise visit to one of their chambers during which Whitfield listens attentively to their many sorrows and tribulations. He is an odd man but an exceedingly kind one. There is something of a mixed nature in him, the light and the dark, the playful and the dreadful—a tortured soul if there ever was one—and yet perhaps because of this, because of his tortured life, his words are always powerful. And none will deny the power of his words, for when he does speak, all must listen. The reverend’s mere presence at this newly established Indian mission all but ensures its success. When it was first proposed by Reverend Mathew Colman, Whitfield’s venerable mentor, the very man who had first convinced Whitfield to travel to the colonies and pursue a life of itinerant preaching, there was never any doubt they would have need to call upon the extraordinary gifts this young man, now a man of forty, might use to persuade the local Mohican tribes to send their children to be educated by Christians.

The other man Mathew Colman chose for this mission is Reverend Thomas Alcom, the Mohican minister sitting at the opposite end of Whitfield’s table, who hardly looks up but once or twice to glance at the other men. Thomas wears a black gown that pinches his wide shoulders, and he wears his hair naturally, long and black, eschewing the white wig that to him symbolizes popishness, corruption, and, though his criticism is careful, the white settlers themselves. He is self-assured, entirely independent; one might even say aloof, but the kindness of his eyes, his general air of tranquility, and his gift of speech place him solidly at Whitfield’s table.

From the hours of eight to ten, Nathaniel and Thomas survey the progress of their mission. They climb the narrow Mission House stairs to the schoolrooms and listen as the schoolmaster reads from the primer and the Mohican children echo his words.

In Adam’s fall

We sinned all.

Thy life to mend,

This Book attend.

The two men speak with the jointers and carpenters who have set about expanding the mission to other houses. They speak with Colman about funds, adjusting for minor changes and setbacks. They nod their heads slowly, with great sobriety, as numbers are recited. These two naturally taciturn men rarely speak to each other during these hours, but there is a conviviality that can sometimes be found in their overly polite mannerisms, when Whitfield allows Thomas to walk ahead of him or when Thomas holds a door for Whitfield. Theirs is a God-given duty; they are brothers in Christ.

Much later in the day, after they have written their correspondences and tended to other pressing matters, when the schoolchildren have gathered round to hear first Whitfield then Thomas preach the gospel in English then Mohican, the two men admire the way the other speaks, the elegant pauses and surprising metaphors that could never be anything but divinely inspired. Whitfield has learned enough of the language to find it beautiful, and he must restrain himself from casting his hands into the air, from crying out with pleasure at the sound of the gospel in this native tongue, the glory of God’s goodness reflected in these new sounds.

Except on this day, at the hour of four in the afternoon, something unplanned has arisen in Whitfield’s meticulously planned day. Stepping down from the wooden stage where he has just delivered his sermon, he follows the children’s rapt gazes to where there emerges from a coppice of trees the outline of a horse with a man astride it. Even before he can see the man’s face, Whitfield knows at once who it is. He sees it in the way one hand holds the reins with such easy authority. He sees it again in the erect posture that seems held by an invisible rope. He sees it in the bulk of the man, the way his largeness seems to dominate everything around him, though somehow this largeness does not suggest clumsiness but rather a hidden elegance, as though this greater sense of scale has taught him to be careful. And in this moment, when he sees the man before seeing the man, Whitfield sees also the curve of Arthur’s bare shoulders, the dip between ribs and waist, the beautiful shock of hair traveling from navel to groin. He sees his hand moving across the expanse, feels the sweat there, the subtle movement of breath so soft in that one spot of belly where Arthur is not muscle. He feels his head falling against this pillow of flesh, Arthur’s fingers combing his hair, then the scent of Arthur’s skin after it has been washed in his seed. All of this comes in the instance of recognition before recognition, a swelling of the bones. His face, without warning, has broken into a smile. He cuts through it with action, with speech.

“Arthur! What brings you to Stockbridge?”

The children have already gathered round this man on his horse, pulling him into the preaching circle. They ask him questions they have learned in English: Where are you from? What do you do? Why are you here? Arthur seems determined to answer each one, stepping down from his horse to squat beside them. Whitfield watches with pride as his friend pours his undivided attention upon each pupil. It is the touch that has already helped so many in Cana, has helped Whitfield a great deal more than any could imagine. He is happy to see Arthur. Simply happy. Yet soon, within a matter of seconds, he finds his body weighted with worry, his neck aching from the old tension. Arthur notices the change and draws nearer, parting the schoolchildren.

“It is nothing serious, reverend,” Arthur says, nodding to Thomas, who has already begun shepherding the children inside the house. Thomas takes one long, hard look at Arthur, a look that could mean anything, and yet, knowing Thomas so well, Whitfield interprets it as curiosity. And curiosity, he has learned, is always dangerous.

Whitfield lowers his voice. “What can have happened?”

“I did not wish to interrupt you.”

Whitfield leads them to the edge of the forest where the carpenters have begun constructing a new house for one of the schoolmasters, dappled shadow stretching for miles around.

“It’s too late for that, friend. Say it.” Even as he sees the shadow passing over Arthur’s face, he knows he will only render those shadows deeper the longer Arthur stands before him in this public place. It is far too odd, showing up like this. Perverse, to almost wish something sufficiently terrible to have happened in order to account for his friend’s visit.

“It is Ezekiel,” Arthur says, stepping across the threshold of the future house, pausing in what will soon be the entry. Whitfield follows. “He is sick.”

Despite dreading for these first few months of Ezekiel’s life that this moment might come, Whitfield cannot hide his reaction, the sharp wince that, as though he has been cut, ripples across his features. So the Lord has finally decided to take this child from him, to remove him from their pernicious influence. There need be no marking or sign of the Devil’s hold; Whitfield had been searching all these months for such a mark in vain. No, only this swift judgment while he is away from home, as clear a sign as any of his guilt.

“It is not serious,” Arthur says, seeming to sense Whitfield’s worry. “But I believe he misses you.”

A moment for Whitfield to take in Arthur’s words. The child is not sick, not really. He remembers to breathe.

“Misses me?” Whitfield laughs out his relief. “Why did you frighten me so, friend? I shall return tomorrow.”

Arthur turns, a look of such pleading in his eyes that Whitfield must look away.

“Ah,” Whitfield says, shaking his head. “I see.”

“No, it is not only that,” Arthur says. “Of course I miss our friendship. But it is not only that. I felt it significant Catherine should come to see me.”

“Catherine came to your house? With the boy?”

“Yea.”

Whitfield steps over a pile of lumber. He waits for the image to leave his mind, the thought of Catherine seeing the look on Arthur’s face as he gazes down at the boy. What might she have witnessed there?

“What good will it do to spoil the child if he is not sick?”

“I do not see it as spoiling,” Arthur says, echoing his friend’s laugh. “We’re learning a great deal about the human animal. Philosophers are now saying humans are primarily driven by the passions. We must, to a certain extent, indulge those passions at an early age.”

“That is precisely the problem, Arthur. The boy was conceived almost to the day—”

Arthur places a hand on Whitfield’s shoulder. Whitfield shrugs it away.

“Is it my fault you chose to lie with her so soon after?” Arthur had been riven with jealousy when he discovered Catherine was pregnant, almost as though she had stolen the gift of their coupling from him. Then, as the months passed, he began to see the unborn child as a miracle, a sign the boy was in some part his as well; since Nathaniel would no longer permit their union, Arthur was at the very least able to live and feast upon the product of their love. When Ezekiel was born, the resemblance was unmistakable; even Whitfield admitted privately to Arthur, while in a state of paternal giddiness, that the boy shared all three of their features.

“What I am saying,” Whitfield says, his tone softening, honeying into the sounds Arthur loves to hear more than all else, “is we must be careful with Ezekiel. We cannot allow our influence to alter him. I want him to have every opportunity. I want him to become the best minister this world has ever seen, to live freely in such a way that he does not doubt himself on account of the temptation we both feel.”

“Yet he will face some temptation, reverend,” Arthur says. “Even Christ was tempted in the wilderness. You cannot prevent it from happening. It is the way of all flesh.”

“Arthur, you and I both know any temptation he might face will be far better than the one we feel for each other.”

Arthur reaches out once more, this time with his injured hand. And this time, Whitfield allows it.

“No,” Arthur says. “I do not know this, reverend. I’m almost certain I wouldn’t trade this temptation for another.”

“Quiet,” Whitfield says. Yet even as he says this, he presses his hand against Arthur’s. When he is near his friend, even in public, he feels himself drawn in, magnetized by the pull that makes him want to run his fingers over every part of the man, commit to memory every dip and dimple, every blemish. The knowledge of this man’s body: a kind of gnostic scripture. The touch: an exquisite burning.

“Thank you for that,” Arthur says, pressing harder despite the pain.

Whitfield steps into the yard, leaving the house behind. Arthur remains standing in the future parlor.

“A house made of air,” Whitfield says.

“What is that?”